Cloud architectures are used in cloud computing and cloud storage systems for offering infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud services. Examples of cloud architectures include the VMware vCloud Director® cloud architecture software, Amazon EC2™ web service, and OpenStack™ open source cloud computing service. IaaS cloud service is a type of cloud service that provides access to physical and/or virtual resources of a virtualization platform in a cloud environment. The virtualization platform can include a large number of host servers each installed with virtualization software that support IaaS constructs, such as virtual machines, logical networks, and the like.
The virtualization platform of a cloud computing system can be used to provide disaster recovery (DR). Virtual machines executing on a production computing system can be replicated to the virtualization platform of the cloud computing system. The replicated virtual machines in the cloud computing system can be brought online in case of failure in the production computing system (failover). During replication and prior to failover, the target host servers in the cloud computing are powered on to allow for management of the installed virtualization software. To support the replication operation, the target host servers in the cloud computing system are powered on even if such host servers do not support an active virtual machine workload (e.g., executing virtual machines). Keeping a large number of host servers powered on consumes a considerable amount of resources in the cloud computing system, including power, energy, datacenter (e.g., cooling, network, etc.), and like-type resources.